


ideals are peaceful, history is violent.

by orphan_account



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: :~)), Angst, Drama, F/F, Fluff, OH and theres gonna be a LOT of flashbacks, Romance, also, also LOTS of future domestic pricefield, changing character POV, i'll add tags as the story progresses tho, if that intrigues u, promise of smut in the future, they are Suffering and Gay™
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6102553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Chloe knows that Max is right. She will be alive tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Living. Living with the weight of world upon her shoulders like she’s fucking Atlas. Living with the guilt and the gore and the core of an empty town wearing away at her own, living and breathing and holding the entirety of eternity in her hands.</p><p>----</p><p>"Sometimes I think the only point of our miserable lives is simply to learn how to live with the consequences of the bad decisions we've made." - S.K.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a red string

**Author's Note:**

> finger guns what the FUCK is UP my dude
> 
> SO basically this fic is gonna take place after ep. 5, across the next few years of chloe and max's lives. how they grow and heal and change together, how they try to understand the universe even when it doesn't want them to.
> 
> and YEAH i know there are a billion fix-it fics of the ending out there, and i know i'm a little late to the party, but i really hope you like my interpretation of it!! constructive criticism/comments/kudos are always appreciated, puddin' pops.
> 
> also, obligatory tumblr self promo: rachelambr.tumblr.com (you can inbox me there if you have any private questions or if you just wanna scream w/me about these gay ass kids)
> 
> and as for an updating schedule- we'll see how it goes. i'll aim for twice a month, maybe more. but who knows!!
> 
> hope you enjoy the story, babes!!

**Chloe**

 

Looks like Seattle’s their best bet.

After all, a rain-stained wad of two-thousand big ones could only get ‘em so far for so long, Chloe knows that. And not to mention the ongoing glow of Max’s phone- the occasional flicker of a screen announcing her parents’ impatient eagerness for their daughter to come home. But the calls, the texts, the voicemails all sat unopened, all sat un-listened to.

Max has been in the same position for the past four hours- numb and tired and tight-shouldered against the seat. She only moves when she switches from rubbing at the skin of her wrists up to the smooth dip of her neck, and Chloe really, _really_ tries not to think about why.

It’s when they’re at a stoplight, alone, surrounded by the empty streets of almost-Seattle that her phone lights up again; It washes a white flush over the slope of her nose, over the split running bloody red down the swell of her lips. (Chloe really, _really_ tries not to think about _that_ , either.)

Her arm shifts from its place against the wheel, palms sweaty as they rake and pull at half-damp, messily-dyed roots. There are so, so many things that she wants to say, so, so many things that she wants to ask, but the only thing she can manage to mold past sore lips, teeth and tongue is: “Answer the phone, Max.”

The light turns green. Chloe doesn’t move. Max doesn’t either.

“ _Max_.”

The light turns yellow. Max still doesn’t move. Chloe doesn’t either.

“They- listen, they need to know that you’re _alive_ , dude.”

Red again. Max blinks.

“I’ll be alive tomorrow,” she breathes. “I can tell them then.”

And Chloe knows that Max is right. She _will_ be alive tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. _Living_ . Living with the weight of world upon her shoulders like she’s fucking Atlas. Living with the guilt and the gore and the _core_ of an empty town wearing away at her own, living and breathing and holding the entirety of eternity in her hands. It’s so blunt, it’s so _matter-of-fucking-fact_ , and it makes Chloe ache, it makes her hurt from the inside-out. Max no longer speaks with conviction, but with dullness, and it’s so messed up, it’s so incredibly _un-Max_ that it makes Chloe’s spine curl and quake with dread.

Max threads time between her fingers like she’s playing a cruel game of Cat’s Cradle with the universe, a game where she tries and she tries but she keeps getting _tangled_ . She keeps getting lost, she keeps getting stuck, she keeps _losing_. But if there’s one thing that Chloe knows, it’s that her string is red, it’s tied between the two of them and it never breaks- it’s a blood-bright, skin-tight string that she cannot see, but she knows is there.

Chloe swallows, she pulls herself away from those thoughts, from that place, to find her fingers splayed and white-knuckled on the wheel. Her tongue aches from below the grind of her teeth.

“It’s.. getting pretty late,” Her eyes switch to the road, foot pressing back on the pedal. _Green again_. “We should prob’ly crash for the night,” She’s trying hard to keep her voice steady, trying hard to keep it solid. Trying hard to keep it soft and safe and something that Max can hold onto, if that’s what she needs. “Sound good?”

The girl nods and draws a quiet, single breath, neon lights dashing past them in glimmers. The moon outside follows them wherever they go, from this small corner of the cosmos and beyond.

“Good. I know a place,” Chloe doesn’t mention _why_ she knows a place this close to Seattle and Max doesn’t ask. But ten minutes later, when she’s pulling into a motel parking lot, she remembers being blonde and fifteen and angry. She remembers smoking a pack a day and drinking out of bottles in paper bags on the side of the road. She remembers ignoring phone calls the way that Max is now, she remembers the straps of a backpack digging painfully into her shoulders. She remembers almost getting there, almost making it, before she gave up, before she said _fuck it_ , before she went back home red-eyed and broken and more alone than ever.

Maybe Max had grown so used to being the one searching for a hand to hold, so used to being the one to pull her in, that when Chloe reaches out, she stiffens like a statue. Static behind her eyes. That, or she’s just plain scared of her. The thought alone is enough to make Chloe feel sick.

Inside it’s cold, it’s familiar, there’s paint chipping off the walls. There’s the same ancient box fan, rattling away by the counter. She doesn’t recognize the attendant- come to think of it, she can’t really remember if there even _was_ one when she was here last.

Leading Max up the stairs proves frightfully easy- she feels like the rag-doll her dad gave her when she was four, just following limply, blindly, not saying word. Just watching with a gaze that hangs unusually dark on her face. Chloe knows that look. Chloe’s _had_ that look. Max wears it far too well and it scares the hell out of her.

The room’s got two dressers and one bed with one shitty tube television in front of it, one bathroom with one mirror that she knows neither of them will be looking into that night.

It’s small, and it looks straight out of a ‘70s furniture outlet, but it’ll work. From here, they’re only, what? Two, three hours from Seattle?

Yeah. It’ll work.

Too tired, too lazy to shower, the both of them crumple onto the mattress, old springs squeaking, recoiling from the impact of their weight. And despite the groaning of floorboards, the creaking of pipes, they were safe. That was really all they needed- to be safe and with each other.

The stale scent drifting through the room reminds Chloe of when she first graduated from smoking Smarties to cigarettes- she was just thirteen then. Chloe had swiped a pack from her Mom and sat with Max (her hair was a little lighter, a little longer than it was now) on the roof as she sucked the carton down one-by-one. And of course, Max being Max, being the dweeb she always has been, declined when offered a drag. _Nah_ , she remembers her saying. _My health teacher would just as soon have my head on a damn stick._

And Chloe didn’t question it. She knew that only _Max_ would worry about what her health teacher thought of her, because that’s just how she is.

A couple silent minutes of staring at a stained ceiling pass before Chloe dismantles the lump in her throat, before she turns on her side and watches. Doesn’t whisper, doesn’t speak, just watches.

And maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s fucked up of her to think, but she almost hates that she’s here to see this. That she’s here to feel this. That she’s here to touch starch-stiff sheets and to sense the dust settling on her skin- that she’s here to live and breathe and love her.

Max’s words keep playing on a loop in her head. Essentially, Max had just given the universe the metaphorical finger and told it to fuck off- for Chloe. But Chloe isn’t the kind of person that people _do_ shit like that for- that’s always been reserved for people like Max.

(But she just hopes that one day, maybe one day, she’ll be worth it.)

The air is damp, it sticks like a second skin as they wait for sleep to come. Only it doesn’t. Though, Chloe supposes that’s to be expected, after decimating an entire town. After finding Rachel rotten and wrapped in blue. After needles and guns and storms and skin ripped between their fingers, after fiery chasms have parted beneath their feet, after frayed, loose ends have been linked- after all of _this_ , and _still_ missing so much.

Max is turned away from her, Chloe left only to watch her breathe, to watch each strained stretch of her lungs. She can’t quite comprehend how something can look so gentle and how something can look so _fucking_ strong at the same time. She knows she’s not at peace, not even in sleep- and she probably never will be. That alone pisses Chloe off enough to scream and swear and throw things, but she doesn’t- instead she just whispers, the words falling soft and sorry past the corners of bruised lips:

_“I love you.”_

And Max doesn’t answer.

Chloe doesn’t expect her to.

What _is_ hours later but what doesn’t _feel_ like hours later, Max’s warmth is gone and the clock reads 4:17 A.M. Sleep had just begun to press at the back of Chloe’s eyelids then, but there’d been a low electric hum, a rhythmic clicking, a ticking that’d prodded them open again.

_“Two-hundred and sixty-four confirmed dead in the small town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon-”_

_“With hundreds of residents dead and thousands still missing-”_

**_“There are no known survivors at this time."_ **

Max stares. One knobby knee is crossed over the other, fingers closed tightly around the cold plastic of a remote. Every few seconds she presses a button and there’s a new voice droning on about Arcadia, a new flood of color spilling over sallow cheeks and sunken eyes. The room drowns her in flickering hues, gaze sticky and glazed and glued to the screen.

Without having to think twice, fumbling fingers, numb from near sleep, blindly reach for the remote to turn it off, to toss it to the ground with a _thump_ . It’s unexpected when Max so willingly falls into a feeble fold at Chloe’s side, arms so weak, but so _strong_ as they curl ‘round a rib-cage. Max looks so faint and so fragile and so _bold_ in this darkness, and while she’s always been a small little thing, she’s never felt more heavy to hold.

They’re cramped and they’re cold but they’re close, they’re together- and that’s more than Chloe could ever ask for.

Tiny hands hook their way around Chloe’s shoulders, breath pressing hot into her collarbone. Chloe’s own palms smooth softly down strands of auburn, because she’s scared that if she holds her too tight, she might break.

Max doesn’t cry. Max is on autopilot- and Chloe doesn’t know whether she should be relieved or terrified.

Chloe doesn’t push her. Chloe doesn’t ask her if she wants to talk about it, because she knows that she doesn’t. But another thing that Chloe knows about Max, is that she’ll probably do it anyway.

She does.

“I killed them,” she croaks, and the words sound all wrong coming out of her mouth; the sound that gravel makes with the crush of a cigarette.

Chloe would rather go her whole life without having to hear Max make that sound again.

“No,” Chloe holds her tighter, doesn’t let up when she tries to pull away. “Don’t you _even_ blame yourself for that.”

“But I _killed_ them.”

“Don’t _say_ that. We _both_ know that’s not true.”

“I killed them,” Only now does she start to waver, voice watery and muffled and weak in the curve of Chloe’s neck. “Oh, God, Chloe, I-I killed them. I-”

“No,” she whispers, clutching onto this girl like she’s something holy, like she’s something sacred, because she can’t, won’t lose her to this. “No. You _saved_ me.”

 _You saved me_.

That’s what she whispers into her ear, kisses into her hair, breathes into the crook of her neck.

Chloe holds her, finally asleep, and it makes her think of the first time she ever held a gun- cold, rigid, skin sweating against a shock of metal. It was a month after Mom’s second wedding- which Chloe had refused to attend- and David was clamoring about the house with a voice that was _already_ yelling about the bills, about the bastards at work, about the half-smoked joint he had found stamped out near the gutter. He’d been knocking, then _pounding_ on her door when she didn’t answer. Asking, then _ordering_ when she didn’t comply.

And somehow it’s the same, and it’s _strange,_ and it’s _dangerous_ how something so small has the power to put everything to a halt- the only difference is that Max is soft, lovely, warm pressed against her. She has the power to start time, to stop it, to start it again, she has the power to so fluidly _fuck_ with the universe. She can lift a finger and the world stops, it waits for her. Max can make the Earth spin backwards, she can tear timelines apart, and really, it shouldn’t be such a surprise, because Chloe has always known that there were bones of _chaos_ hidden underneath all that calm skin.

 

* * *

 

Max winces when her mother babbles into the phone the next morning at full speed, going on and on about _where have you been, when are you coming home, are you hurt, who are you with_? She responds with quick, one-word answers, fingers bunching themselves into mousy fringe out of mild frustration.

And when she says “ _I’m with Chloe- um, yeah. Chloe Price._ ” Vanessa’s voice is shrill, excited, and Max has to hold the phone a few inches from her face until the squealing stops.

Max sure as hell isn’t back to normal, but she’s a little more receptive now- whether that’s because of the phone call or the clearer skies or the fact that they’ve caught some z’s, Chloe doesn’t have a damn clue- but she’s grateful. Watching her like that, not being able to do much else about it but hold her, just made everything worse. Not that it _could_ get much worse- but now wasn’t the time for Chloe to dwell on stuff like the fact that her phone hasn’t rang _once_ since they left. Now wasn’t the time for Chloe to dwell on stuff like the fact that Rachel was cold and _dead_ and wrapped in plastic. Now wasn’t the time for Chloe to dwell on stuff like the fact that they’d left an empty husk of a town behind them, the fact that they’d fled like fugitives from the scene of a crime they hadn’t meant to commit.

There was time for that later. There would always be _time_.

Every so often, Chloe steals a lingering glance that lingers far too long to really still be called a _glance_. A glance at the bruised half-moons stamped under her eyes, at the way a thrift store t-shirt rubs against her collarbone. Chloe can tell she’s trying not to wear her sorrow on her sleeve- she’s always been awful at that. Always been too busy worrying about, taking care of other people. But still, she wears that sorrow all over her face- there’s so little to her, that there’s not much place else for it to go.

But she doesn’t say anything about it. Doesn’t ask anything, either. She just _knows_ that after last night, she’d brush it off with an “ _I’m fine, don’t worry, keep driving_.”

Pulling up to Max’s house is weird. Weird, because it’s not the blue-paneled, one-story house she remembers spending countless nights in. The one she remembers walking home with her from school to. The one that was still empty, even five years later. The one that she remembers breaking into on her birthday last month, stuck with a parking ticket that still hasn’t been paid (not that it matters anymore) and a reopened emotional wound that hasn’t stopped bleeding since. Instead, it’s some weird, trendy two-story with lots of windows that’s so _Seattle_ it hurts.

Max is reluctant when they get to the door, barely getting two knocks in before her dad answers. He’s grittier than Chloe remembers- more hair, more wrinkles on his face, more worry in his eyes than there ever was when she was a kid. She’d always thought that he was cut from the same cloth as her own father- only difference was that he and Vanessa were constantly breathing down Max’s neck.

Her mom looks the same. Thin and small, hair long and black and wiry with the beginnings of grey streaked through. Her arms are still as welcoming and as warm as ever when she pulls Chloe in, hugging her like she isn’t like some sloppy, uncivilized street rat. Like she isn’t the reason that their hometown is in shambles.

Chloe thinks it’s a miracle when Max manages to scrape together a few smiles- and sure, she was probably just putting ‘em on for her parent’s own good, but hey- fake it ‘til you make it, right?

  
(Okay, so, maybe not. Because her parents look at her like they aren’t quite sure what sort of strange being has stepped into their daughter’s skin, and instead, they look at her like she’s exactly what she is: a force of nature, barely contained beneath the bruises of the breaking body of this soft, kind eighteen year-old girl.)

Max expertly dodges their prying questions with several shrugs, a few nonchalant _uh-huhs, m-hms_ and _nopes_ until the pair is sent up to her room. And it’s weird, because every time Chloe had imagined her when she was in Seattle, she’d just thought of her in her old bedroom: yellow walls instead of white, carpet instead of wooden panels. The one thing that stays consistent though, are the polaroids plastered to every wall.

One shower later, with skin wet and sticking to Max’s borrowed hoodie and shorts, Chloe doesn’t exactly feel like raking her fingers through the death and the decay and the _shit-black_ rot crudding up her skull- not that she ever really will- but she can at least trick herself into thinking that it isn’t there.

She’s had some practice.

Snooping around Max’s room proves distracting enough. Her bed is tucked in the far corner, a string of fairy lights lit up all nice and warm above it. There’s a stack of vinyl records, a record player- because of course Max would have a fucking record player- posters for all sorts of pretentious indie bands that Chloe normally would’ve laughed at.

And duh, there are pictures everywhere- of friends, of hundreds of sunsets that Chloe wasn’t there for. Of sneakered feet in sand, of flowers and clouds and white-toothed smiles. There are a few in particular that make her stomach pang, though, a few that make her throat close up.

There’s one that someone else took of her, closed-eyed and laughing, some tall red-head’s arm around her neck. There’s another one of her grinning, hiked up on some blonde guy’s back by the beach. Another, some dark-haired dude passed out, Sharpie scribbled all over his face.

But then come the photos in older frames- a bit yellowed, a bit ragged around the edges.

( _“I never forgot.”_ She remembers her saying..)

She finds their pinkies twisted together in a promise. She finds one that Vanessa took, the both of them asleep on Max’s bed. She finds one of that night on Chloe’s rooftop, her first cigarette stabbed between her teeth.

And, well, _shit._

Chloe doesn’t know what to _do_ with something like that. She doesn’t know whether she should laugh or cry or scream or _worse-_ she feels like the only thing she can do is nothing at all- so she settles on the latter. With a wavering sigh, her creaking, lurching, groaning, _tired_ body unfolds on Max’s mattress, still covered with the same old quilt she’s always had.

There’s one square in particular, though, that catches her eye- yellow, threaded through with bright blue cornflowers.

 

* * *

 

She remembers tracing the outline of that exact pattern on a Friday afternoon six years ago, with Max sat upside down, legs propped up against the wall. They’d both been ignoring their homework for good three hours now, and Max had pocketed her dad’s lighter to suffice for Chloe’s lost one. Max’s parents were gone for the weekend, and after _much_ convincing, they’d agreed _not_ to put her on lockdown with a babysitter. She _was_ twelve, after all.

That meant the two of them had a whole two days to themselves. Joyce- _mom-_ and dad, had given Chloe the OK. Sure, she might’ve said it was for a school project, and _sure_ , that might’ve, _sort of_ been a lie, but where was the harm in that?

Chloe’s sat next to her, lips blushing around a cigarette, Max’s hair dark and long and fanned out around her face. She’s picking away at her guitar, popping away at a piece of bubblegum, and with the pink evening light filtering through the blinds, Chloe thinks that she looks sweet and soft and really pretty. It makes her stomach do all kinds of weird stuff.

“What song is that?” A blonde brow lifts in question. Even though Chloe knows that Max is playing a tune that doesn’t exist, she still asks for no other reason than to see the way that the corner of her lips twitch upward.

She takes a second, strums a few more strings and takes a breath before saying, “I’ll let’cha know.” And Max smirks, just as promised, just as always.

Chloe huffs a laugh and tugs a sandy strand of blonde behind her ear, tightens her lips to take another drag. Max doesn’t mind the cigarettes, though every now and again, she’d catch her pulling one of those cute, worried frowny-faces at the sight of them.

“Hey.” Max snaps Chloe out of her reverie, knocking their knees together.

“Hey.” Chloe pokes at her thigh, skin warm through the threadbare fabric of denim shorts.

She blows a bubble, bats at Chloe’s hand when she tries to pop it. “Wanna go to the lighthouse?”

The walk is short- Max’s house _is_ the closest one to the lighthouse, after all- and Chloe trips like she always does on that loose stepping stone twenty feet up the path. But whatever, it’s worth it, to get Max laughing like that.

When Chloe asks her if she knows Danny Fisher, the textbook-toting, glasses-wearing, geeky kid from her third period English class, her face twists in confusion.

“I know _of_ him,” An eyebrow lifts. “Why, what about him?”

“Dude,” Chloe starts, free hand adjusting her dad’s baseball cap to sit backwards on a blonde head. “He’s _so_ into you.”

And while Chloe’s learned to stop beating people up since she hit middle school, she still can’t help but feel like shoving him into a locker whenever he looks at Max that way. The way that _she_ does.

“Um. He is?”

“Yeah, man. It’s pretty obvious to anybody with _eyes_.”

Max mumbles an uncertain “oh,” before she criss-crosses her legs on the bench, goes back to watching the sun sink in the sky.

“So, do you, um. Do you like him?” Chloe sniffs. Her fingers twitch, they shake as she snuffs out her cigarette on the heel of her boot. She pretends that they aren’t, though- and if Max notices, she pretends that they aren’t, either.

“Mm. I dunno,” Chloe watches as Max pulls her hair over one shoulder and wonders what it’d feel like to kiss her. “Not really. I mean, he’s nice I guess, but. Y’know.”

Chloe nods, but almost chokes to death when Max says, “I guess I’m just not into dudes like that.”

(As in, into dudes like _that_ ? Or into _dudes_ like that?)

But she plays it off, she always does- she’s gotten pretty good at that recently. “Yeah, yeah. And.. you know he’s not good enough for you anyways, right?”

That just earns her the signature Caulfield eyeroll. “Right.”

And really, it’s kind of annoying that Max doesn’t realize how awesome she is. It almost makes Chloe want to hit her. Not that she would. But she kind of wants to.

So she settles for a ruffle of brown bangs instead. “Just you ‘n me, right, Caulfield?”

“Yeah,” Max smiles, warm as she leans into her. “Just you ‘n me.”


	2. a plea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY BUDDIES AND PALS I'M BACK i'm sorry that i was gone for so long i've been busy r.i.p. me
> 
> but anyway here's chapter two!! it contains LOTS of coping chloe and max so. be warned. it's still setting things up BUT IT'LL BE HAPPY SOON I PROMISE (also there are mentions of vomit/alcohol/drugs/suicide/smoking so. if ur sensitive to any of those things, pls be cautious n take care of urself <33)  
> fair warning, this chapter changes POV a few times, and so will future chapters from here on out. everything'll tie together at the end of the story tho, i promise.
> 
> and i just wanna say thank you to those of you who have left such nice comments/kudos/etc for me!! the amount of positive feedback i've been given was totally unexpected and it means a LOT. it really encourages me to keep writing :~)
> 
> as for how often updates will come- i'll aim for once a month. i try to write 9 pages/4,000+ words per chapter, and that amount of time seems to fit in pretty well with everything else goin on in my life rn
> 
> my tumblr is rachelambr.tumblr.com, feel free to inbox me if you have any private questions!!  
> constructive criticism/comments/kudos are always appreciated <3  
> enjoy!!

**Chloe**

 

Chloe is sixteen the first time that she ever gets arrested. “ _ Disorderly conduct _ .” What the hell.

The cold of a cop car against her chest, of cuffs against her flesh would become a familiarity- misdemeanors would pile up around her and her rap sheet would grow long enough to make a scarf out of if she wanted. Not that she’d really want to. Scarves look dumb. Scarves  _ are  _ dumb.

But Chloe is dumber.

The precinct is crawling with cops and she’s handcuffed, pissed off, soaked with rainwater and blood in the middle of it. She’d been picked clean of her possessions- car keys, cell phone, cigarettes, loose change, license- fucking  _ gum _ , even. Stupid, but the whole goddamn  _ system  _ is stupid

Her tongue tastes like copper, it feels nailed to her teeth- her fists itch where she’d felt the bones crack beneath them. It hurts to blink. It hurts to breathe. If she weren’t so full of pride, she might’ve second guessed going all  _ Million Dollar Baby _ on that dude.

Joyce is tight-lipped and heavy-eyed and tired when she waits behind a glass wall, just like any other mother would be-  _ should  _ be, if they’d been forced to raise such a delinquent piece of shit daughter. If they’d been forced to pretend to love her. To care.

But still, Chloe doesn’t feel sorry for her- because Joyce isn’t  _ Mom  _ anymore. She hasn’t been ever since she’d replaced her old wedding ring. Ever since she’d crammed Dad’s stuff into a box and put it on the highest, dustiest shelf in the house. Ever since things got bad and she jumped ship, ever since she glommed onto the  _ first  _ son of a bitch that didn’t make her feel  _ completely  _ useless.

It was like she just forgot about him. It was like Dad never  _ fucking  _ existed.

Joyce didn’t tell her mustachioed little shit of a husband, but he  _ did  _ get a call from one of his buddies: Officer Whatshisname with the balding head- who is now, officially, on Chloe’s shitlist- and it's as soon as she stumbles through the front door that he’s all up on her. He's accusing her of this and of that, his breath hot, his finger in her face, fuming and flaming like some pissy little pitbull.

She shoves him aside, spits something akin to, “ _ Save me the fucking lecture, G.I. Joe _ ,” and treads up the stairs as fast, as angry as this breaking body will allow.

Chloe swipes at tears with thumbs still sticky from blood, she coughs and she retches and she drinks from the bottle under her bed until she barfs. It’s only when she wakes up the next morning with her head hanging over the rim of the toilet, brain aching, banging against her skull, that she finally fucking admits to herself just how  _ lonely  _ she is.

She wishes Max was here.

She wishes Dad was here.

She wishes Joyce would divorce that sorry excuse of a step-father. She wishes Joyce would, for  _ once _ , pull her head out of David’s ass and just  _ listen  _ to her.

She wishes that Joyce would be  _ Mom  _ again.

 

* * *

 

Mom calls four days after the storm.

Chloe is half-asleep when it happens, and Max is gone like she always is this late at night. These days, at least- shut behind the bathroom door, crying, blaming herself. Pretending that she isn’t.

She’d thought that the ringing was part of some blissful dream, at first- some absent-minded form of wish fulfillment that she, of all people, is the most undeserving of. That was, until, with an owlish blink, the idle glow of a waiting phone had begun to shine offensively bright into her eyes.

Apparently, she and David have been holed up in some crappy camp across town, strung along with a slew of other survivors. The bodies. The hundreds-  _ thousands  _ of missing bodies that Max had literally worried herself  _ sick  _ about.

Mom cries and laughs and tells her that she loves her, and it’s for the first time in years that Chloe _knows_ it- that Chloe can tell her the same and know that _she_ means it, too. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard her mom sound so relieved, so grateful, so _happy_ in her life, and it’s very suddenly that that day three years ago, with her fists bloody, her bones half-broken and her eyes both black, doesn’t seem so bad anymore.

David eventually takes hold of the phone, and, for the first time in her life, Chloe  _ doesn’t  _ feel like breaking his jaw just to shut him up. It’s weirdly reassuring to hear him sound so cordial, so apologetic, and it’s only when he tells her that Jefferson’s been put in police custody that she considers dropping the name “step-douche.” “Step- _ dork _ ” would suffice. 

For now.

Chloe doesn’t cry until they’ve hung up. And when she does, it’s pathetic. It’s the head in her hands, tears running down her face type of bullshit.

To think- the universe wanted her dead not five days ago.

A knock on the bathroom door proves fruitless, as expected- but when she opens it, she finds a sleeping, sweating, sob-stained Max, all splayed out on the bathroom floor. 

It isn’t the first time. 

It won’t be the last.

She lightly, lovingly picks up this pile of sore skin and bones, lids and lips pallid as they part, quietly mumbling apologies that she doesn’t finish. Chloe just gently shushes her, grips her tighter, and there’s something about the way that their bodies feel so close together. Something about the warmth that stokes at her stomach when hesitant legs hook around her hips, when fingers shake and intertwine. Something about the way that a voice sounds so sad, so small in her ear when Max says, “I’m  _ sorry _ .”

It’s no secret- Mark Jefferson leaves a trail of broken people behind him.

Mark Jefferson is a load of oozing shit dressed from head to toe in Armani, pores gaping and sweating, seeping out the scent of Cognac and cocaine. Mark Jefferson is a repulsive waste of flesh, the reason that Rachel’s punched through the ground in a shallow grave, the reason that Max is digging her own. He’s an infection, a virus, spreading from one vessel to another. Another day, another dying, another dead.

Mark Jefferson is one insane prick and Chloe  _ hates  _ him with every single cell in her body.

But now he’s gone- he can’t hurt her anymore. It’s just them versus the world now, which, really, is no better. Whatever cosmic fortune cookie bullshit that’s been upchucked all over their lives, proves it.

Max Caulfield never asked for this. She never asked for her life to become some shitty sci-fi flick where everyone would live or die at her hand. She never asked to play God. She never asked to harbor millions of universes in the bruised bones of a clenched fist, she never asked to shake loose the powers that laid dormant in her blood. She never asked to be  _ stuck  _ with Chloe, she never asked for an ultimatum- and if there’s one thing that Max  _ hates _ , it’s an ultimatum. But the universe is under no obligation to give anyone  _ anything _ that they want, is under no obligation to make  _ sense  _ to them.

Max never asked for this, but Chloe Price did. Chloe Price asked for this on a day two years ago. A day when she’d been contemplating whether she should choke down pills or bullets, whether she should fall off a razor’s edge or a rooftop’s. She asked for this when she was wondering whether or not to keep a pretty corpse for her mother to bury. She asked for this on a day when Rachel Amber found her, saved her, and she can’t help but feel like this whole  _ fucking  _ thing is her own damn fault.

_ (She asked. The universe answered.) _

“You shouldn’t be,” Chloe coos- actually  _ coos-  _ before chapped lips crush a kiss against long bangs. “You shouldn’t be. It’s not your fault, Max. None of this is your fault.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Chloe dimly registers the fact that Max is on top of her, seemingly oblivious as to how close they are. But then there’s the feeling of a shaking head, of a chin tucking into her neck that stops her before she can do anything  _ really  _ stupid. “None of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for me.”

“Hey. You shut up,” A hand smooths down the small of a shivering back, the other gathering strands of brown to brush behind a pale ear. It’s then that she swallows and waits a bare-knuckled beat before saying, “Joyce called.”

Max immediately pulls away at that, eyes wide and glimmering, even in the dark. It’s like she doesn’t believe it. Like she  _ couldn’t _ , even if she got the call herself. “She did?”

“..Yeah. She did,” Chloe affirms after a second too long, smiling, her thumb lightly wiping the red from beneath a freckled nose. “David, too.”

Then Max is back in her neck. And it's a little pathetic, the way that they’re both crying, both sobbing like little bitches in the night- but it’s okay. Because at the end of it, they're wrapped up in each other like they always should be. Like they always should’ve been.

 

* * *

  
  


**xoxo RA**

**-♡-**

 

To Rachel, Max Caulfield had never been anything more than a sweet smile paired with a set of soft eyes. It was hard to figure out much else, after all, ever since Chloe had so  _ adamantly  _ instilled the “ _ We Don’t Talk About Max _ ” rule. 

The most she’d ever known of her had been frozen in the frames of folded, faded photographs, wrinkled and worn and hidden away in Chloe’s wallet, in Chloe’s drawers, in Chloe’s jeans. The most she’d ever known of her had been tucked beneath the teeth of a torn mouth, beneath the gritty, grinding lines of a grimace, beneath the strained, stressed skin of scraped fists.

Those things alone were enough to convince Rachel that Chloe would have a complete goddamn  _ meltdown  _ if Maxine Caulfield ever came waltzing back into her life.

And, as usual, Rachel was right. 

But a week later, after having endured storms and scars and skin scratched bloody, guns and god complexes and girls snatched up and away- here they are, together. Like they always should be. Like they always should’ve been. And they’re still as lost as ever, even  _ with  _ the help of an all-knowing, all-seeing being beside them.

(Not that they really know that.)

(...Or that they really should.)

It’s quiet up here. Softer. She might not able to feel the sun anymore, she might not be able to feel the rain or the wind tumble past her- but she can feel the pressure of the planets. She can feel the vibrations of those that came before her. The echoes of realms old and new, created and destroyed, one by one.

One by one.   
( _ One by one _ .)

And it’s only now that the universe says, “They’re clueless.”

And it’s only now that Rachel answers, **“I know.”**

“Do you think she has any idea of what's to come?”

**“For who?”**

“For the others.”

**“She will.”**

“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

**“She** **_will_ ** **. Give the girl some credit. She’s smart. And she has, like, all the time in the world to figure it out.”**

“That’s how this mess was started in the first place.”

**“Well, it wasn’t** **_my_ ** **idea.”**

“Wasn’t it?” 

**“Whatever.”**

“You care too much.”

**“Shut up.”**

And it’s from up here that Rachel watches. She watches them like she always does.

She’s so careful with Max. So deliberate and gentle, even in the way she just  _ looks  _ at her. And Chloe’s always been composed of bared teeth, of burning eyes, but now it’s something different. Something softer. Something totally see-through and weirdly  _ sweet _ .

It’s all so hilariously predictable of her. Rachel just  _ knows  _ that if she were there, she’d be crying with laughter.

“They’ll never understand,” The universe cuts through. “This little game of yours is getting to be quite  _ tedious _ .”

A metaphor, yes, but Rachel knows that this is  _ far  _ from a game. It’s not some sadistic, fucked up trap out of a  _ Saw  _ movie or some other shit, even though it might  _ feel  _ that way- it’s  _ fate _ , simply put.

**“They’ll figure it out,”** She says.  **“They always do.”**

“And if they don’t?”

**“They** **_will_ ** **.”**

The universe quiets at that. A rare occurrence, really- one that Rachel is  _ supremely  _ grateful for. It’s difficult enough to guide two girls through a world that wants to devour them at every dark corner, even  _ without  _ it’s constant yapping.

The thing about fate is, it’s not as permanent as the universe insists. Not with the ability to fuck with it as you see fit, at least. Fate is elastic, able to be stretched between the gentleness of pale hands and bent between the bridges of broken skin. There’s no permanence about it, not from up here- not from down there, at the tips of fragile fingers.

Max Caulfield is five feet, four inches of fate, personified. Chloe’s fate. She is everything that ever  _ has  _ been and everything that ever  _ would  _ be. Everything that ever  _ will  _ be. 

Rachel just hopes she realizes it soon.

 

* * *

  
  


**Chloe**

 

So weird to think that  _ Seattle _ , the place that had stolen Max away five years ago, is the same place that gives her back. 

Max has started to chip away at the collateral damage piled up around her. She’s started to put patches over the pieces of time she’d lost, over the people and the parts of herself that have been picked apart, plucked and pried from her palms.

Sure, she’s beat up, fucked up, messed up, mangled, but she’s coming back. Slowly, but surely, she’s coming back. And things sure as hell aren’t good. Things sure as hell aren’t  _ normal _ . But they’re getting there.

They’re getting there.

It’s the first week that’s the worst.

Her right hand still twitches in her sleep. When she  _ does  _ sleep. Her nose still bleeds and her head still bangs, skull still crammed to the hilt with beating brains, with pulsing veins that swell. She thinks that Chloe doesn’t notice, but she  _ does _ .

It’s when she snaps up in the middle of slumber for seven days straight that Chloe vaguely remembers something she’d said on the cliff- something about a nightmare- but she doesn’t ask. Not now. Not yet.

The second week she smiles. Twice. It’s beautiful and it’s near heart-breaking to see, the curve of pink in contrast to the healing red, to the tired black blooming beneath her eyes.

The first time it happens is when Kate calls. Turns out her parents had picked her up from the hospital and taken her back to.. wherever it is that good Christian girls go when they’re not at some hick art school. Chloe’s grateful- beyond grateful, actually- that Max hadn’t saved her only for her to be crushed by a some loose piece of drywall, by some streetlamp or some sign in a storm just days later.

The second is when Victoria calls. Crazy, considering Queen Bee had been trash-talking Max not even a week ago, but whatever- she made Max smile, and that’s what matters. The only time it falters is when Victoria thanks her for saving her from Jefferson, for saving her life- and that’s something that Chloe knows, she just  _ knows  _ is the last thing that Max wants to hear.

Partly because she doesn’t want to hear about  _ him _ . Partly because she doesn’t want to hear about drugs and red binders and Rachel. Partly because she knows that she was willing to let Victoria  _ die _ . That she was willing to let  _ Kate  _ die. All for Chloe’s selfish ass.

It’s the third week when she laughs.

It’s a little huff pushed through her teeth, a half-smile curled up on her cheeks when Chloe says the right thing. For once. She can’t even remember  _ what  _ it was she said- some stupid quip or crack, probably-  too distracted by the tiniest upturn of a tender mouth. And it’s borderline pathetic, compared to her usual girlish giggle- but it’s  _ something _ .

Max goes back to school for two weeks before her parents pull her out again. It’s another art school this time, where the kids beatbox into flutes and dance in the hallways and make murals out of Cheeto dust that illustrate the prison-industrial complex- all sorts of pretentious hippie stuff like that. But it’s after a breakdown in the bathroom for ten days straight that they decide,  _ yeah _ , she shouldn’t be there. 

Chloe can't really blame her.

When Chloe starts to heal, it’s like skin growing over glass. It's ugly. Unforgiving. It comes forth in the slow silence, in the slow sickness that’s been threatening to split her apart at the seams for what feels like  _ centuries _ , now. Everything comes forth full force, in harsh, dripping fragments, all made of years of hurting and hating yet still  _ loving  _ so much that her heart couldn't contain it.

Chloe’s always been stupid. She’s always bottled up her sadness and let it sit, let it age into watery sourness- but not this time. This time, Chloe smashes the proverbial bottle cap against the proverbial countertop and she wolfs it down, hoping that the next one will be easier to swallow.

It never really is.

Rachel Amber was lost and then she was found. In the most morbid, most macabre way conceivable, she was found. And Chloe loved her, like,  _ really _ loved her. Rachel didn’t, though- not like that. But she wished she did. 

She wished she did.

Chloe remembers hours, days, weeks spent in the junkyard after that fateful April afternoon, drinking and smoking and smashing bottles against walls because again, again,  _ again _ , it happened  _ again _ .

She remembers waiting for her phone to ring as fingers traced the fading sheen of photographs. She remembers waiting for Rachel to lean in for a light because she always forgot her own. Waiting, all she remembers is waiting- stuck with only the silence and herself, still stupidly searching for a sign. Waiting, waiting,  _ wanting  _ and getting nothing in return.

Until Max came back.

It’s the morning after Max holds her on a Monday night that she knows that she belongs. That she was meant to be here. That the pads of pale fingers were meant to smooth back strands of blue from a sweating forehead, that they were meant to stroke up and down the swells of a shaking spine. That the press of dry lips between her eyes was meant to feel as warm and as sweet and as  _ good  _ as it did against her skin, that Max’s heartbeat didn’t just match hers by coincidence. 

But she’ll never know why. If anyone deserves Max Caulfield, it sure as hell shouldn’t be her. She knows this, because even when they fall asleep on the bathroom floor early that morning, with Chloe curled into her side and chanting,  _ let me die, let me die, let me die, _ Max just holds her closer. Tighter. Like she’s precious. Like she’s worth it.

Like she’s worth the townful of people that plague her dreams. Like she’s worth the tired eyes, like she’s worth the blood that runs down her chin, shining bright like the ripped red of Rachel’s shirt.

And it hurts to know that she’s never coming back. That the last time she’d ever seen Rachel Amber’s face was in stiff, stark black and white- that the last time she’d ever touched her was with brittle-boned hands in wet, bloated earth.

It hurts to know that she’d spent six months shifting back and forth between angry and afraid and fearing the worst. It hurts to know that the whole time  _ she  _ was waiting, too, just  _ waiting  _ beneath her feet, wearing away in a wasteland full of rust.

It hurts to know that if Rachel had anything to do with Max coming back, Chloe would never get to thank her.

And it’s hard not to remember what it felt like, sore with rain-stung skin as they stood on that cliff. It’s hard not to remember what it felt like with hands entwined, still dirty from digging up graves, still twitching from tailoring and tearing apart timelines.

It’s a month later when they leave. A month later when Max still hasn’t taken, touched, or so much as  _ looked  _ at another picture. A month later when Chloe watches her through the rearview mirror, just like she had right after the world had ended. 

Or so they thought.

Things might’ve gotten better, but Chloe doesn’t even want to  _ begin  _ thinking about what must be going on in her head. She knows it’s nothing good. What’s happened over the past month has been enough to convince her of that- but she never asked. And Max never answered. 

The bloody noses and blank eyes spoke for themselves, anyway.

And they have no plan, no place to go. Nothing but each other. But that’s okay, because that’s all they’ve ever needed. 

All they’ll  _ ever _ need.

The iris prodding at the corner of Chloe’s eye is constant and  _ definitely _ not as subtle as she hopes, but she's really too tired to care. She watches her anyway, she always does, with each each stoplight and every street. She watches her seated sock-footed and silent in the silver Seattle mist, watches as lights bounce off of jutting bones, veins bluish and thin in the center of a sleeping city. (Chloe figures that she must’ve lost at  _ least  _ ten pounds from guilt alone.)

But now there’s just Chloe, just Max next to her. Just Max’s knees tucked neatly to her chest, just Max's cheek pressed tightly to the window in the thrall of sleep. The way moonlight and lamplight alike wallow in the hollows of her throat feels like five years ago, when Max was just twelve and Chloe just freshly fourteen. It feels like flickering films projected upon pink paleness, quiet technicolor flooding the edges of freckled flesh. It feels like nails chipped, poorly painted as their fingers twisted together, the threads of friendship bracelets worn warm and familiar around two wrists.

Chloe had pretended to be asleep, then. Truth was, she hadn’t fallen asleep watching a movie with Max since she was eleven.

But it wasn’t like she needed to know that. 

Like, ever.

She’d memorized the pattern. She’d memorized how Max would huff a little laugh at the sight of closed eyes, how she’d pull the blanket up to Chloe’s chin with kind hands. The butterflies in her stomach had fluttered wild, rampant then, and it kind of made her want to throw up. In a good way. The best way.

But Chloe watches her, now- a girl as wrecked as the town she’d left behind.

Chloe watches her, dead weight in her gut.

She watches her.

Her chest hurts.

 

* * *

  
  


**Maxine**

 

“Where were you all day, girl? We missed you.” Courtney chirps from her spot on Maxine’s bed, legs carefully crossed as she peers into a compact. She’s pouting and slathering on  _ way  _ too much strawberry lip gloss. As per usual.

Taylor gives a snort from the closet, ”More like  _ Victoria  _ missed you,” which earns her an elbow in the rib. And a  _ well-deserved  _ elbow in the rib, it is.

“I was visiting an old friend.” Maxine shrugs it off, because really, she’s not sure  _ what  _ in the hell she was doing at Chloe Price’s bedside this morning. An angry Chloe Price. A pissed off Chloe Price. Which, even after five years apart, she knows is  _ never  _ good.

“Ooh, a  _ friend _ ?” Taylor bubbles under with laughter, bangs blonde and fluttering with the soft expel of air. “Do tell.”

Maxine just rolls her her eyes, and for some reason, the cigarette in her hand feels foreign. She takes a drag anyway. “Shut up you  _ ass _ . I’ve known her since we were kids.”

“Who is it?” Victoria probes, voice uneven and verging on the edge of annoyed.

Maxine just shoots her a look, brows raised high beneath brown bangs. She lets smoke curl between them, thin and white in the brief silence that surrounds it before she finally blinks, finally breaks it, and says slowly, “Chloe Price. You don’t know her.”

Vic nods, looking uncharacteristically small. “Oh. How come you’ve never mentioned her?”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of ours, babe,” Courtney cuts in, three uncomfortable pairs of eyes flicking over to her. “Bring her to the  _ End of the World  _ Friday?”

“Um,” Maxine just sniffs, shakes her head awkwardly. “She can’t.”

(She can’t. She can’t she can’t she can’t she can’t she  _ can’t---  _ ~~_ YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF CHOICES _ ~~

**_IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, MAXINE. YOU KEEP FUCKING UP_ ** )


	3. you make falling look good, baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so final exams kicked my ass BUT I'M BACK so here's a thing. take it  
> content warning for brief ableism, drug use and underage drinking  
> my tumblr is @rachelambr if you have any private questions/comments or whatever else :~)  
> n yea that's p much it! peace out

**Maxine**

Courtney’s hands are flitting around her, zipping her body up into some tight little black thing that makes her skin burn at the seams. She’s telling her how pretty she looks, how diamonds have always looked better on her than pearls, but the words just pass right through her ears, muffled like she’s underwater. Muffled like she’s six feet deep.

Max can’t bring herself to tell her that she feels like her insides are rotting. Max can’t bring herself to ask herself _why_.

* * *

**  
Chloe**

This is probably their billionth cheap Chinese food feast in a row, and Chloe’s honestly surprised that neither of them has gotten scurvy.

She smiles at their hands when Max tries to show her how to use the chopsticks, laughs when she narrows her brow at the way Chloe uses it as a skewer instead.

She blows her straw wrapper at Max, like she always does. It hits her square in the face, like it always does. And she steals Max’s spring rolls when she’s not looking, pretends not to know where they went when she asks, like she always does.

The only thing that ever really changes is their fortunes.

Usually it’s some snarky, half-baked one-liner, something stupid about how she should cherish the little things and _blah blah blah_ , _nag, nag, nag_. Whatever it is, it’s always annoyingly right, and it’s like she can just _feel_ the judgment cutting into her thumbs as she holds it.

When she reads aloud “ _Good things take time_ ,” she feels like she should laugh. Like she should _laugh_ at the shitty cosmic joke that her life’s turned into.

She only looks up when Max giggles, and for a split second she thinks that this stupid fucking fortune cookie might be right. The sunlight outside is fading, smiling sweetly down on her through the blinds, and she’s laughing wonderfully, goofy before she adds, snorting, “In _bed_.”

Chloe rolls her eyes, has to grit her teeth against the warm knot unfurling in her chest, against the sound of Max’s dorky old laugh. It’s a little more bruised, sure, but it’s still dorky, happy. Happy, like she was on a sunny Wednesday morning full of chlorine-stink and dare-induced kisses.

And, well, there goes the final stomp on her blue-balled heart.

“And you call me a perv.” She just rolls her eyes, tries not to swallow too hard. “what’s yours say?”

Max just shrugs, snickers, and throws her own crumpled fortune at Chloe’s face (revenge, she figures, for the straw wrapper), bending her arms to pull her sweater over her head. Or, what _used_ to be _Chloe’s_ sweater.

She huffs and pretends that she doesn’t notice the way that warm wool grazes the tops of Max’s thighs, brow pinched as she reads:

_You are thinking about doing something. Don't do it, it won't help anything_.

And when she folds the fortune, shoves it into her pocket this time, it’s not just for the lucky lotto numbers.

* * *

A flash. A snap. The ol’ familiar flutter of film.

The dim lighting of the motel bathroom and the slant of Chloe’s inexperienced hands probably don’t do Max much justice, but she’s not really meant to be contained to the frame of some lousy little picture, anyway.

She doesn’t really seem to notice, the camera’s flash and shutter ignored alike. Committing _almost_ -but-not- _really_ genocide can do that to a girl, Chloe figures, so she just stays stood by the sink, one hand tapping against the counter as the other presses her phone to her cheek. Even from the bed, Chloe can hear the faint coo of Vanessa’s voice on the other line.

They hadn’t told her parents the night that they left. Which, ultimately, was a dumbass decision on their part, but even Max knew that her parents would’ve been put them on lockdown if they tried to pull that shit with them knowing. And inevitably, they flipped, considering Max hadn’t done a single rebellious thing in her life since she left for Blackwell, but despite that, they keep sneaking a few extra bucks into Max’s bank account when they get the chance.

She watches and waits as colors slowly start to seep in, faint and muted around Max’s shadow. She stands frozen in time, gentle, long-legged and wet-haired, soft and smooth-stepped in the glow of cheap yellow bulbs.

Her nose isn’t bleeding. Her wrists aren’t red-raw from rubbing.

Chloe shifts to make room for her in the bunch of blankets, hair mussed and arms bare in the stiff, stale breeze of the bedroom. It’s unexpected when Max clings onto her, all soft arms and soft legs, face burrowing into the dip of Chloe’s shoulder.

It had taken Max weeks to familiarize herself with touch again. Chloe remembers staying up for far too many hours on far too many nights, not wanting Max to have to sleep in the same bed as a bad luck charm. There were times that Max would flinch whenever Chloe would do so much as hold her hand, and it scares her to think of what it was that she might’ve seen. If it was his hands instead of hers, violent and selfish and hard.

Max curls her fingers into a fist below her chin, lashes fluttering as Chloe lazily, loosely threads the tense digits between her own. They feel familiar and friendly and godlike, not ghostlike, like they have for the past two months. Her skin is cold, like her bones have been frozen to the marrow, but Chloe feels warm, beside her. Warm, despite it.

She gives their fingers a little squeeze, gives Max's knee a little nudge beneath the blankets and whispers, “Your hands are cold.”

Max blinks, slow and sleepy, content and catlike before she says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Chloe brushes her bangs away, damp and dark, haphazard and half-wet, half-stuck to her skin in the blackness. She’s probably all too obvious, all too pointedly focused as she presses a kiss in between closed eyes, quick to tell herself that she’s just imagining the rapid pace of Max’s heartbeat.

There’s a breath of a pause, and Chloe can just barely feel Max's thumb brush over the back of her hand as she mumbles, “Sorry.”

She shakes her head, smiles slow and soft against sore knuckles as she says, “It’s okay.”

And then they’re just lying there in the quiet. If she squints, it almost feels the same as it did a thousand sleepovers ago, the two of them tired and tangled on top a twin sized mattress. They’re just older this time, a little more lost. Tougher and taller. Marked with a few more scars. Scars, inside and out of the places they’ve been, of the people they’ve left behind. People like Rachel.

Rachel isn’t missing anymore. She’s in every empty road, in every wrinkle, in every fold of their bedsheets. In every speed bump and every stop sign. But it doesn’t weigh on her. It doesn’t feel like she’s carrying around a husk of a heart in her chest anymore.

There are times when Max is in the passenger seat, or in her arms, or watching her as she smokes out that she wants to laugh. It’s times like those when Chloe can practically _hear_ Rachel’s voice telling her to _‘Just go for it, Priceless_.’

“When did you get it?” Max suddenly whispers, her voice sleepy and sweet and so, so, soft.

“Hm?”

“This,” She says, and Chloe can feel a finger running down the ribbon on her arm, bright and red and lashing, veering through vines and butterflies.

_Oh_. She tries not to shiver and says, “Just after I turned eighteen,” her breath billowing and warm (and _shaky_ ) as it ruffles the dark of Max's bangs.

Max just nods and the room goes silent, curling closer into Chloe’s side before she says, “It’s pretty.”

And Chloe can’t help it when she smiles, can’t help it when she says, “ _You're_ pretty,” because _yes_ , even with the black and the bags beneath her eyes, Max Caulfield still manages to look pretty. And even after years of loving her, of knowing her, probably even more than she knows herself, Max Caulfield _still_ manages to make her stupid.

It’s dark, she can’t see, but she’s still ninety-nine percent sure that Max is rolling her eyes as she shifts, as she buries a muffled “ _You’re dumb_ ,” into the slope of Chloe’s shoulder.

She’s definitely not wrong.

And after everything it’s just this, their nth night together, their nth shared bed. It’s just Max and Chloe, just Chloe and Max. Just the two of them rolling through shithole town after shithole town, living and _almost_ -loving only to leave like ghosts the next day. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Her life went from shit, to _more_ shit, to a significantly _less_ amount of shit in an unthinkably short amount of time. It’s so much more different than it was a month ago. A month ago when Max had shaken her awake in the middle of the night with car keys in hand, a month ago when Chloe hadn’t argued.

Still, Max deserves so much better than what Chloe can give her, though. In the deep, deep, dark, she knows that destiny doesn’t just change it’s mind, not like that. It’s not that simple. Simple is sucking and spitting the poison from a snake bite. They’ve just been saving it for later.

But she gives in. It’s the next morning when she’s sitting, blowing smoke out the window, brushing the backs of her knuckles over brown hair that light in her chest settles. Max’s light. Long-burning and yearning to burst.

She gives in. She finally lets herself drown in it.

And that’s the way it is for a while.

Chloe drives most of the time while Max sits next to her, cross-legged and sun-soft, shining bright around her edges. She’s insistent on playing that pussy hipster music of hers, wispy voices singing about love and loss other stuff she tries not to pay too much attention to. It’s something Chloe normally would’ve bitched and whined and moaned about, but it gets Max talking about how she first learned to play guitar when she was twelve, how she worked in a record shop when she was sixteen, and how she only ever played songs that made her happy.

There are times when Max drives and Chloe puts her feet up on the dash, ignoring how _totally_ illegal it is for her to be behind the wheel. If they weren’t in the middle of nowhere, she sure as shit would’ve been pulled over by now, but the thing is, they _are_ in the middle of nowhere. So it doesn’t really count.

And every once in awhile, she’ll catch Max’s gaze on the curve of a cloud, on the broken bend of a tree branch. It’s that same look she’s been seeing since she was six years old, only more cautious, more careful, with just a hint of intrigue curling over her lashes.

“Pull over,” She says one day, a bright and sunny Friday, feeling particularly brave in the passenger seat. “You’re missing a lot of beautiful shit.”

But she doesn’t. She never does, and that’s okay.

Chloe keeps taking them for her anyways. One time in a laundromat, two times in the back of her truck, three times in as many motel rooms- more and more and more. But of course, they all suck. They all come out fuzzy, unfocused, though there’s always one constant, something familiar and Max-shaped, soft and silver-edged in the middle of each.

She never notices, and that’s okay too.

But what _isn’t_ okay is the stupid way that Chloe’s stomach clenches whenever she looks at her, loves her so much that she can barely breathe. What isn’t okay is that it’s getting more and more difficult to ignore the softness of Max’s eyes, the gentle way that she touches her and talks to her and looks at her like-

* * *

 Like everything else perfect in the world, it happens during the golden hour.

The bed of the truck feels familiar against them, metal cold and biting and harsh from the frosty tail-end of fall. She’s letting her head rest on Chloe’s lap, blinking and beautiful as the sun sets, the sky bathing her body in pink and gold light. Chloe’s jacket hangs two sizes too big on Max’s bones, practically drowning her, shrinking her,  rendering her small and soft beneath the well-worn, well-loved fabric. And Chloe just watches her, loves her, unashamedly, unabashedly, as she sits sleepy in the sunset, dreamy and divine in the almost-dark.

There really should be some sort of mark where Max and the universe meet, because Chloe isn’t so sure that she can tell the difference on her own any more.

It’s quiet for a while, just the sounds of their breathing, the occasional car rolling by. And yeah, it’s kinda fucked up, considering the circumstances, considering who and what they’ve left behind- but she feels different, like this. Peaceful. She can’t bring herself feel guilty. She can’t bring herself to feel like she traded Max’s life for her own, not after so long since they went Splitsville on Shitsville.

It was like melancholy had grown hands and wrapped its fingers around her throat, straining, straining, _suffocating_ for days- but now it’s loosened its grip, it’s let her go, it’s finally let her breathe. Now it’s just like she’s got vertigo, but she doesn’t feel sick.

Finally, there’s no printer ink to wash off her hands at the end of the day, no nagging impulse to check, re-check, and re-re-check her phone for a call, for a text from a girl who wouldn’t, couldn’t come back to her. But Max did. Max _is_.

Max _is_ , also, currently digging through the confines Chloe’s jacket pocket to hold out a stack of photos- _Chloe’s_ stack of photos- all warm, all beloved and barely bent at the edges. She’s thumbing through them, white frames gleaming, glistening before Chloe can even begin to explain herself. Before Chloe can even begin to feel embarrassed.

Because of course, the universe just _loves_ to fuck her over even when it’s _not_ trying to kill her. Confessing undying love is hard, but it’s even harder when it’s been brewing painfully, horribly for the past seven years. And when she has an image to uphold. A cool one. (Which is bullshit. Max has always been able to see right through it, anyways.)

They’re all of her, _of course_. There’s one where she’s sleeping, legs white, bare, matching the bedsheets she’s tangled in. There’s one where she’s lazy, languidly leaned up against a wall in the buzzing, low light of a laundromat. There’s one where she’s hazy, faraway, a blanket thrown over her body as she sits milky-eyed in the back of her truck.

In the moment, when the camera flashed, when the film spat out, she never thought of _why_ she did it. But now that she does, she realizes that she didn’t want to forget. Didn’t want _her_ to forget. Didn’t want her to forget that she was there, and now she’s _here_ , and she’ll be somewhere else someday, too. Somewhere else that brings out the best in her and makes her better and makes her glow even brighter than the way that she is now, with the sunshine and the half-sliver of a smile on her face.

Chloe just hopes that she’ll be there, too.

She’s about to start off on some stupid, all too late tangent, but the way that blue flickers over to her makes her throat close up again, makes the swell of worry in her chest deflate, even if only a little. So she decides against it, doesn’t say anything. Just watches wide-eyed and waits.

She can’t quite read her expression, but she can see the way that she struggles for a second with that almost-smile, with the way that her throat bobs as she swallows. And it’s kind of distracting, really- Chloe's supposed to be feeling mortified here, after all- until finally, she manages a tiny, “Thanks, Chlo.”

So she shrugs, plays it off with a smooth "Yeah," pretending that she wasn’t even suppressing the desire to fling herself into the sun two seconds ago. Her lips stretch into a grin, and she takes a chance, crushes a kiss to Max’s forehead, the words muffled as she says, "sure thing."

And apparently, Chloe did the right thing with the photos, because Max sits up, reaches into her bag, and pulls out that shitty old ‘80s dinosaur of a camera. It’s pretty weird to see, considering she’s looked at the thing like it had teeth for the past two months, but it looks at home in her hands nonetheless.

“A kind of golden hour one remembers for a lifetime,” She mumbles, pausing to lift the viewfinder up to her eye. _Snap_. “Everything was touched with magic.”

Chloe tries not to look at her too long before she stammers, “W-what?”

“It’s a quote by, uh,” She tilts her head in half-thought as shakes out the photo, dangling her feet over the edge of the truck. “Margaret Bourke-White.”

Chloe just nods like she knows who the fuck that is, and Max must notice, because she snorts, tucks her hair behind both ears and says, “She was a photographer in the Second World War.”

And Chloe must be looking at her funny, because Max is grinning, reaching up to brush a stray strand of blue behind her ear as she asks, gently, “Is everything okay?”

It is. It’s better than okay, maybe. It’s the best it’s been in months, because here Max is, quoting cheesy artists again, smiling all goofy again, touching her like _this_ again.

It’s something she’s done almost a million times- _almost_ in a million motel rooms, _almost_ in a million beds. But this time, she feels no need to hesitate, no need to back down, not with the way that Max looks at her, cheeks and nose nipped red from the cold.

But then none of that matters, because it’s _Max_ who goes in for the kill (and Chloe just _knows_ she’s gonna give her shit for that later), fingers hooking around a trio of dangling bullets to pull her closer.

And then she’s kissing her. Chloe is kissing Max. _Max_ is kissing _Chloe_. She’s kissing _Chloe_ , who’s been waiting for this since she was thirteen, whose last kiss was with the barrel of a gun, who’s fucked up her life and her dreams and everything that she’s ever loved and for some reason, she’s _still_ forgiving her for it.

When Chloe remembers she has hands, she forgets how to use them just as quick. Her fingers fumble dumbly through mousy hair, coming to curve along the crescent of her jaw. She can feel the swell of Max’s smile against her own, warm and familiar and now that she thinks about it, it’s crazy to think that there was a time that they were ever apart.

Turns out that not only does Max have the power to reverse time, but she has the power to stop time, too.

Max starts to bubble under with soft laughter, pulling away to press a grin into the curve of Chloe’s neck. So Chloe just stays silent, stays stunned as she noses into breeze-bitten hair and skin, eyes big, blue, wide. And it’s just _that_ for a while. Just this. Just familiar arms and cheeks that hurt from smiling, waiting for one of them to speak again.

Eventually, it’s Max that breaks the silence. Chloe’s expecting something a little soft and a little sweet but instead she gets:

“You ate my spring rolls again. Asshole.”

So Chloe has to flick her on the forehead for that, has to kiss her again. Partly just because she can, and partly just because Max is a little shit and she _needs_ to know it. So Chloe pins her down and smushes a kiss to her lips, to her nose, to her blushing, flushing cheeks- all over her dorky little face. And it doesn’t even matter that Max called her an asshole, because she’s beautiful and she’s bright and she’s _laughing_ like she’s the funniest fucking person on the planet.

It’s totally cheesy of her to think, but it’s like she finally knows what first kisses are _supposed_ to feel like. It’s not supposed to feel like it did when she was fourteen, all teeth and tongue in the back row of a movie theater with a boy she didn’t care about- it’s not supposed to feel like it did when she saw the way that her lipstick had looked smeared across his jaw, stomach twisting and turning with something sour.

It’s supposed to feel like it did when the only thing she could think of was the way Max’s face had looked when she’d helped her put it on. When she told her how pretty she looked. Like this.

And _man_ , she wishes she could tell fourteen-year-old Chloe how _this_ feels. How it feels to catch Max’s bottom lip between her teeth late into the night, _gentle_. How it feels to kiss promises into Max’s mouth, how it feels to utter the words “ _I love you_ ,” and mean it. How it feels when Max says it back.

* * *

**Maxine**

 Something feels very, very wrong.

The routine is no different than before. Victoria had gone overboard at the bar, like she always does, not to mention that on top of that, she’d gotten high, and stupid, and far too handsy. She’s all over her, mouth laving, lashing, staining her throat scarlet. She’s grabbing her, pushing her and placing her, trying to wring something out of her in the same way that she does with the skeletons in stranger’s closets.

This sort of confidence only ever comes on these sort of nights, nights where she doesn’t have to put on a play, where she can shed the guise of Blackwell’s bougie bullshit. It’s only ever on these sort of nights, nights where she’s all teeth and all tongue, all skin that starves, that sweats and pins down palms.

But Maxine can’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t be here, not now, not with her. Not her. Not underneath her. Not underneath the weight of her because it’s getting harder and harder to breathe, harder to _focus-_

“Dude,” She sighs, sudden in the way that her voice resonates, strange in the otherwise quiet of Vic’s room. The sound waves seem to swell as they bounce off paper-thin walls, seem to ring rougher, coarser around the edges as she strains, “ _dude_ , stop.”

So Victoria halts, pulls herself away from a half-red hickey to wipe at the back of her mouth and laughs, “Did you just call me _‘dude_?’”

She seems satisfied despite the interruption, what with the wolfish grin curled up on her cheeks- but this time it’s easy for Maxine to ignore that look in her eyes, that quirk of her lips so swollen and red, and huffs as she says, “Okay, sorry, _your highnes_ s.That any better?”

And apparently it is, because Vic just _mhm’s_ and starts back at her jaw again with that sloppy smile, seemingly ignoring the way that pale hands clasp onto her shoulders and _shove_.

“No, _seriously_. Get off.” Maxine moves from the bed and tugs the straps of Courtney’s borrowed dress back up her shoulders, hissing when her knuckles bump against a bruise. She feels sick and her fingers are sweating for some reason, struggling with the zip before she finally slides it shut. She hates the ugly way that her ribs rattle at the scent of the joint left burning on Vic’s desk, the tip colored brightly with two different lipstick prints.

Victoria, justifiably dumbstruck, sits still and slack-jawed on the bed, silent until she says, dumbly, “ _Um_.”

Victoria’s never been one to handle rejection well- especially when it comes from Maxine- but she just keeps at it anyways, fingers forcefully smoothing out the stubborn wrinkles in her skirt as she lifts a brow and asks, “ _Um_ , what?”

“ _Um_ , what do you mean, what?” She jolts, lifts herself from where she’s propped up on her elbow, body near-bare and swallowed in a sea of bedsheets. “What the hell is up with you today?”

She pretends not to notice the puny way that her voice shakes as she asks, “What do you mean?”

“Uh,” Victoria scoffs, breath sharp as it ruffles honey-blonde tufts of hair. “I think you know _exactly_ what I mean.”

“Nope, no idea,” She pants through a smile, half-manic as she begins the painstaking search for her shoes. _Not under the bed, not under the desk_.. “I’m perfectly fine.”

There’s a beat of silence before either of them speaks again, whether it’s out of shock or annoyance or what- and all that’s left to surround them is the heaviness, the sound of music a few doors down, someone starting up a shower.

Finally, Victoria speaks again, but it’s barbed, abrupt- “Well, you don’t _seem_ perfectly fine, I mean- disappearing like that? Blowing me off to go chill with that Chloe chick-”

And that’s when she freezes, feels her stomach flip. When it all comes together.

**_Chloe_** **.**

It comes in flashes, in buzzes, in blurs she can’t quite make out- it’s that, it’s the morphine, it’s the waning breath and the car crash, _two_ car crashes, one Chloe’s, one not-- it’s the frozen bones and the broken body, out of place, but _not_ out of sight, out of mind-

**_Your fault_** , a voice says, not hers, **_your fault_** _._

“Listen, I’m just- I’m distracted, is all.” She has to avoid hurling out the window as she bends down to finish toeing into her other shoe, trying, and failing, to hide the wobble in her step as she works to pinpoint the voice bleeding into her brain. It’s whispers are small and near-silent in the back of her head, but the words still drill into the marrow of her skull nonetheless: **_It didn’t happen_** **,** **_it didn’t happen. Not here, not yet, not there_** **.**

“God, _c’mon_ ,” Victoria whines, and it just makes her head hurt worse. “Don’t let that crippled fuck ruin our night. You know she, of all people, would want us getting off in her honor. Now would you just-”

The words sting irrationally below her skin, like each and every syllable is working to scrape and split apart at the wound in her chest that she didn’t even know was _there_.

“Would _you_ just _stop_ ? _God_ , you’re annoying when you’re drunk.” Her feet ache in a pair of too-tall high-heels as she steps and stumbles towards the door, **_it didn’t happen_** , her fingers numb as they close in on the knob, **_it didn’t happen_** , before Vic starts slurring again.

“And you’re annoying when you’re sober. _Hey-_ where you going?”

**_Nathan’s_**. “Nathan’s.”

She regrets is at soon as she says it, because there Victoria is, smirking that stupid little smirk like she always does when she thinks she knows something. Immediately, her brow quirks in question and she taunts, “Going back to boys already?”

And that’s just- “ _Gross_. No. I just- I need to talk to someone that _isn’t_ piss fucking drunk.”

“And you think _Nathan_ isn’t?” She snorts. “ _Okay_.”

And yeah, Victoria’s probably right, because Nathan’s never sober. But at this point, anything’s better than the thought of being splayed out on her bed, being hers for the taking.

“Uh,” Maxine is already halfway through the door- “Dry out, okay? I don’t want you doing anything dumb.”

She passes through, and Victoria's garbled shout of, “ _When'd you become such a drag_?” sounds less bitchy when it's behind a slammed door.

* * *

She can’t tell if that’s beer or old blood on Nathan’s shirt, but at this point, she can’t really bring herself to care, either.

A solid ten minutes have ticked on by, dragging along slower and slower with each passing second. The silence that surrounds them is dense and it’s long and it’d be awkward if it weren’t for the drink in her hand, if it weren’t for the way that Nathan shoves aside CDs and school books and whatever else stands in the way of his stash.

Then very suddenly, in the deep, dark corner of his room, he says, “You’ve been acting weird as fuck.”

And yeah, she knows. “Yeah, I know.”

He eyes her, almost amused. “Are you okay?”

“Totally.”

She's totally not.

Because there’s a girl that’s rotting in a hospital bed six blocks away and she’s not even there to _do_ anything about it. Because now is the time that she chooses to feel guilty. Because _this isn’t how I want things to end_ and _I love you Max, I love you I love you I’m never leaving you_ keep skipping over and over again in her head like a broken record and she can’t fucking make herself remember _why_.

But it's not like she's gonna tell him that. Instead she goes with something _way_ dumber, like-

“You’ve loved someone before, right?” which tumbles out of her mouth like loose teeth. _Bloody teeth_.

He just turns, looks at her exactly like he should, like she’s exactly as crazy as she feels, and says, “The fuck?”

But she just shakes her head and swallows another sip of whiskey, mouth still dry as she mumbles, “Answer the question.”

Which is a stupid thing to say. It’s definitely not the stupidest thing she’s said tonight, but it’s still pretty stupid. And it shows in the way that Nathan’s brow darts into his hairline, in the way that his fingers tense around the edges of his credit card. It’s quiet, so quiet that she can practically _hear_ the blood in her body, around her bones rushing down, down, _down--_

“Well, sure,” He says, abrupt, holding up the little plastic bag in his hand as he flicks it with his finger. “She’s the the love of my life.”

Which is sad, because she knows it’s true. She can’t remember the last time she saw Nathan sober. But she pretends that she doesn’t notice, pretends that she doesn’t care, like she always does, and just rolls her eyes to say:

“Shut up. Seriously. You have, right? Like, enough that you’d do anything for them, except-” **_Kill them_ ** **?** “Except, one day, you can’t anymore.”

_God, shut up, shut up, shut up---_

It’s like her mind just can’t sit still, like it won’t stop fidgeting. She wishes she could ignore the awful way that her vision’s starting to blur, wishes she knew whether or not it actually takes him half a minute to answer or if it’s just her messed up, fucked up brain.

“..Yeah.” He finally says, staring glassy-eyed behind her, above her. “But she- she left. Eventually.”

The chair squeaks and he spins back toward his desk, hands bony and dimly-lit as he begins to draw up a series of neat lines, plastic edges scraping and scooping at clean white grain.

She figures that that should be it, but she has to know-

“Who?” And she takes a sip. The whiskey's gone warm. Her right hand is numb.

He shakes his head, unwashed bangs lolling lazily across his forehead. And that’s enough of an answer.

“Sorry.” Another sip, and her head starts to spin. Faster. **_You’re going around and around and around and again and again and again--_ ** and if she blinks she can just barely see a flash of blue-- of blonde--

“I- I don’t think anyone really knew her,” He sniffs, snorts, coughs, his shoulders hunched horribly as he bends over his work. “I- I don’t think she even knew herself. But I loved her. Love her.”

He’s not facing her, but she can still hear that pathetic little tremor in his voice, the jaggedness in the back of his throat. It’s rough and it’s raw, emotion so unpracticed as the words curl into his tongue like chips of glass, leaving them to fall into place between the grit of his teeth.

_Why does she know that feeling so well?_

“And did she love you?”

**_No._ **

“No.”

She stares for a second at the empty shape that Nathan has become, at the shadow, and very briefly longs to shed some light. The kind of light that she doesn’t have anymore.

But she decides against it, takes a sip and stands, wishes she could say something like, _I gotta go_ , or _sorry for bothering you_ , but she just _can’t_ force her lips apart, can’t force her mouth to mold the words--

so she hits the ground instead.


End file.
